all the girls

I think about the possibilities in life. I think about being human and growing up in a specific family. I think about how my family might as well be anyone else’s family. I think about potential, free will, destiny. I think about freedom. I think about how no matter what choices I make and what freedoms I exercise there seem to be patterns that repeat throughout the generations – I wonder how this can be.
I think about the way the early morning light hits the quilt my grandmother made which weighs on me heavily as I sleep. I think about the scent of the room in which I sleep and the generations of people who have woken to the light hitting the wallpaper in the hallway. I think about what that wallpaper looked like when it was new, each and every layer of it.
I have lived out parts of my life in honor of others, as a substitute for the life they were not able to fulfill, the potential they were not able to harness and reach. I live my life in the present, making choices and plotting each day, watching the ebbs and flows of existence as they rock us all sometimes gently and sometimes with rage and aggression.
I am at peace with myself most days. I am at peace with the chaos I have been dealt, or that I chose, I am uncertain which is exactly the case. I don’t care to plan every detail of my future any longer. I am concerned about being in the present today. I look to the past to reference where I have been, where I came from, to get clues about where I could possibly be going.
I think about motherhood, I think about womanhood, I think about childhood - often in that order. I have explored my thoughts. I have projected my dreams. Now I make this offer to you.